


Interlude

by Hooda



Series: Anthology [3]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Emotional Fluff, Established Relationship, Jyn is a Pathfinder, Missions, One Shot, cassian likes to be there for Jyn, character study ish, just them two on a rainy night on Cassian's ship, they learn to trust each other and now they like each other whoop whoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 11:25:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10661586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hooda/pseuds/Hooda
Summary: Their missions rarely align to meet at the same time.So when Cassian finds her this one rare time in the same system - they were three hours apart but hundreds from home - he does not think twice about conveniently letting the Pathfinder squad know he was in range.





	Interlude

**Author's Note:**

> Oh look its Monday. ~ Sarcastic "whoopee"

Cassian likes to catch the moments before she is up and about. He finds it most endearing when Jyn lets her hair loose from its tight hold. It cascades softly over her shoulders when he catches her tugging the elastic out, facing away from him in the tiny sleeping room of the ship, late at night after the mission drifts off for a few hours.

“I really need to cut it,” she’d mutter after spending some time asleep with it loose to tangle around her neck. Her fingers would tug helplessly at the ends of the brown strands, hands smoothing over jagged bangs, finally resting on Cassian’s thickening beard instead.

Their missions rarely align to meet at the same time. It makes their reunions on base quick and fraught with hasty promises of:  _ next time  _ or:  _ not enough time  _ sometimes:  _ here? _

So when Cassian finds her this one rare time in the same system - they were three hours apart but hundreds from home - he does not think twice about  _ conveniently _ letting the Pathfinder squad know he was in range.

He scours a market fluttering with colors from across the galaxy, robes thick and thin whisking between the stalls and cruddy buildings. The double suns hang low in the distant sunrise, a forever dance of two red gods looming over the system.

When Naona slips into his peripheral vision from where he absently admires bolts of crimson fabrics, his chest flutters with suppressed glee. The soldier’s tight red curls bounce around her tight shoulders that brush Jyn’s height, depending on the sole on the boots she wears. Steel-capped, dull and rounded for a sharp kick, he notes she wears for this mission.

“You look familiar,” Naona drawls, sliding up at Cassian’s side and smoothing a hand up a brown jacketed arm until it rests on his shoulder. Her pretence of interest amuses Cassian in the little way that keeping false secrets for the sake of a relationship do.

Naona leans forward enough to have her chin inches from his cheek, her eyes sweeping the marketplace behind him. “What dock are you at, Major?” she breathes.

Cassian whispers the location back into her ear, keeping his voice lowered.

She smiles as she turns from him, leaving him to his work of pretending to be interested in the next table, which is laden with spices and plants of all sizes hanging from the stall ceiling. The promise of warmth and a night spent with company rather than cold solarity leaves a buzz in his system that spurs him on for the rest of the day.

_______

It begins with a slow lull in the sky, like the warm breezes and sunlight were suddenly slowed, when the dark clouds flutter in for the night. They settle over the bustling of the city and its acres of surrounding mountainsides in sweeping torrents of svelte blues and greys, blacks and pitch blacks. The heavy rains press down like a great drumbeat that refuses to be merciful. It leaves no room for comfort as people dodge the great droplets for cover, scarfs and hands raised to protect their faces from the downpour.

Crowds part this way and that, groups splitting between the short buildings for different sectors or a promising bar for the evening. Some make for the airfields where the multitudes of spacecraft power down for the long night of biting cold storms ahead of them.

No one pays a second thought to the figures that pass between the ships, nimble as they make their way around the wings of battered A-Wings or keep a wide berth around the larger freighters that touch down for a recharge for the next leg of their journey.

Rainwater mixes with slimy black oils and liquids of multiple different consistencies. It all funnels into the mud that lines the airfield. No one pays a second thought to the hooded figure that splits off from the clusters of hustling pilots and passengers who race for the cover of their space crafts.

He almost misses the two sharp taps through the patter of rainfall. Cassian keeps a hand on his blaster as he hits the button on the pilot’s control panel in the cockpit. Boots squelch into the hold with only the indignant way a vagrant might know.

Cassian emerges from the cockpit just as the hold door slides shut and Jyn unwraps a deep blue scarf from around her head. It dripped with rainwater and stinks of unwashed sweat. She drops it unceremoniously onto a hook on the wall before peeling off her equally as soaked jacket.

She was not cold for long. Quiet green eyes flutter to glance at his stubble or the collar of his shirt and Cassian crosses the distance between them. The sleeves of his thick white thermal shirt from Hoth are rolled up to the elbow, but unlike a freezing Jyn, he was burning with warmth.

Cassian slides his parka over her shoulders, helping her guide her shivering arms through the sleeves with a grin. Jyn practically burrows into the material of his coat, her head peeking out from the top of the furred collar to flash him a thankful smile.

“Thanks,” she murmurs, the first words either have spoken in weeks to each other. The bench squeaks a little when she finds it with the backs of her knees and sits down with a sigh of tired relief. She makes quick work of the ratty laces of her filthy boots before tugging them off and tossing them aside to dry.

He goes back to his work behind a panel, his tools scattered around for easy reach and the panel covering leaning against the co-pilot’s seat he hopes for the one day she decides to take up the mantle of freedom that the end of the war offers them.

With her knees tucked under her chin, her shoulders swathed in the parka that smells unmistakably of him, and the lights of the hold glaring at her from above their heads, Jyn feels at peace. Not for the first time in months, she wonders what it would have been like to have taken the offer of a clean beginning upon returning Cassian to the Alliance after Scarif.  _ You’re technically free,  _ they’d told her.  _ Records of your life are ready for termination when you are ready,  _ the Council had told her a few days after the Empire blew to pieces.

She tries to convince herself it was the need to clean her name herself instead of having a droid delete her existence from the galaxy in the blink of an eye. They both know that is not the reason when she whispers his name across his lips and lets her hair fall onto his bare shoulders, just like hers.

Jyn Erso is a name she wants to remember for the rest of time, even if it was charged with being the daughter of a renowned scientist or the Partisan with a lengthy trail of red that drags her through history.

“How long before Kes wants you back to continue with the mission?” Cassian’s voice cuts through the stillness of the air. The rainfall hitting the hull of the ship seems like a distant echo of a backdrop to their ears.

“He said no more than five or six. Just a handful, really,” Jyn murmurs, her voice laced with exhaustion. Cassian does not doubt that she willingly kept herself awake for the missions she ran. But sometimes she could never seem to settle down long enough to close her eyes and simply rest her tense muscles.

The panel covering makes a grating noise that sets Jyn’s nerves on edge. Cassian wedges his tool kit somewhere between the caf pot in the corner of the hold and his back of extra clothing.

With warm hands covered in knick-knack scars and blemished oil, smelling faintly of spices, he helps Jyn up from the bench. Her eyes droop as he helps her across the hold to the back of the ship where the single cot beckons them closer. His hand carelessly searches for the button that turns the lights half-off in the hold.

They lie swaddled in his parka and single blanket, holding their cherished hours between them and using them to simply be in the warmth of each other. His forehead bows until it touches the back of her neck - she pulled her hair loose - and Jyn curls his arm around her waist until it is wrapped around her like a protective vice.

He makes sure to set an alarm for five hours on the small datapad he brings with on missions. Jyn curls into him as he slides back under the blanket.

“Five hours,” she murmurs, eyes closing, “is not enough.”

“It never is,” is the last thing he says before letting the exhaustion take him.

The rain continues to beat down on the outer hull of Cassian’s ship, but they curl around the other on that small cot, the smallest of time between them. But it never mattered, it never would, nothing ever would, as they dreamt of a life beyond the war.

**Author's Note:**

> (Naona is a friend of Jyn's - just clarifying - and is in no way attracted to Cassian)
> 
> Comments are always welcome - pos and neg! - H:)


End file.
